Sports writer for The Age

RYAN Harris wants to vent his frustration at having to endure the most injury-riddled start to a season across his 13-year career – and Victoria's batsmen are set to be the victims of it.

Harris, 33, has been relegated to a forgotten member of Australia's fast-bowling battery due to shoulder and hip injuries that have sabotaged multiple scheduled attempts to return in the past four months. His selection for Queensland in its one-day cup match away to Victoria at the MCG on Saturday will be his first domestic-level match for the season.

While Harris played only two matches in both the 2005-06 and 2009-10 seasons he said he had never had such a late start to the season. He said the waiting time was particularly hard because he was due to have fully recovered from shoulder surgery during the Big Bash League and believed his return was imminent since late December.

"I've been so close so many times yet so far, like the old cliche. It's been really tough. I usually enjoy watching cricket and going to it but there's been a few times this season when I haven't even watched it on TV or even gone into the Gabba to watch the Bulls. It just got too hard, there was only so much I could take."

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As Harris was shackled by his slow rehabilitation from shoulder surgery, and then an unrelated hip injury, the only thing that kept him "half-sane" was his ability to play club cricket for Toombul as a specialist batsman. That situation has improved slightly in the past five weeks, with Harris given permission to bowl on three occasions – twice at about 80 per cent intensity and once at close to full intensity.

One benefit of the unexpectedly long injury stint, Harris said, was that his right knee – troublesome because it is almost completely devoid of cartilage – had only had negligible demands on it this season. Harris was initially named only in the Bulls' squad for the one-day match, but was added to the squad for the Sheffield Shield match starting on Monday against the Bushrangers after Alister McDermott, who was named in both squads, was called up by Australia A. The right-armer is not expected to play in the four-day match, and is instead favoured to return to four-day cricket in a Futures League match starting the following Monday.

Harris said he doubted he still had any credits banked among national selectors and said his current focus was limited to making consistent appearances for Queensland for the rest of the season, then the Indian Premier League. He said he would relish the opportunity to represent Australia A in England as an Ashes trial, but would not obsess over that possibility.

■Scans will determine whether paceman Josh Hazlewood has, as feared, suffered a recurrence of the foot injury that recently thwarted his opportunity to make his Test debut.

The 22-year-old's first international appearance of the summer, on Wednesday night in the Twenty20 loss to West Indies, ended with him complaining of soreness in his left foot, which absorbs the most stress in his bowling action. Hazlewood, who had a stress fracture in the same foot last season, was sidelined for a month after similar symptoms in early December. QUEENSLAND (from): James Hopes (c), Peter Forrest, Matthew Gale, Cameron Gannon, Ryan Harris, Chris Hartley, Nathan Hauritz, Ronan McDonald, Dominic Michael, Greg Moller, Luke Pomersbach, Nathan Reardon.